**10,000 Fans Incentive Plan
Since entering 2024, Boeing, one of the world's largest manufacturers of civil and military aircraft, the real ace of the United States, has been doomed. First, the hatch fell off after the plane took off, causing a global uproar, and it didn't take long for US Secretary of State Blinken's plane to have a "serious failure", which sparked heated discussions. The White House has made it clear that Boeing should change its "profit-oriented" corporate culture, and this is just February, and Boeing has encountered new troubles.
Boeing Aircraft reported that Boeing Civil Aircraft Group CEO Deere said in a statement that last week, a leading company reported to the company that some of the 737 aircraft were substandard and that two boreholes were not in the right place. Although the problem does not pose a direct safety risk and the aircraft can still fly safely, Boeing has decided to rework about 50 undelivered aircraft, possibly delaying delivery.
It does not affect safety but has to be reworked, and in the past, there is inevitably a group of people who tout the rigor of American companies. And now, it looks more like they don't have enough confidence in their products. The Boeing 737 can be said to be the star product of this company, and it has been sold for more than half a century since the birth of this series of aircraft. So the design of the aircraft should be fine, the problem is mainly in production,Behind the production problems is the decline of the entire Boeing Company, and indeed the entire manufacturing industry in the United States.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 5,000th B-17 bomber built at the Boeing plant in Seattle was born at the beginning of the last century, just in time for the rapid development of American industryAt that time, the United States was in a real era, and with the help of its superior geographical location and "isolationist" policy, they relied on the introduction of outstanding talents from Europe, which laid a solid foundation for the industrial development of the next hundred years. Boeing took advantage of the situation, and by the 30s of the 20th century, they began to work on the development of large bombers and AWACS, which coincided with the outbreak of World War II.
After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the United States was involved in World War II, and their military industrial enterprises ushered in rapid development. Boeing contributed famous aircraft such as B-17 bombers and B-29 bombers to the U.S. military, which played a huge role in the subsequent landing operations of the U.S. military and the attack on the Japanese mainland.
The United States, as the world's leader in military aviation, has set many world records, the end of World War II, the Iron Curtain landed, the United States and the Soviet Union began the Cold War, the two sides engaged in an arms race, Boeing has launched B-47, B-52 strategic bombers, KC-135 tankers and other models, and made a lot of money. These three waves allowed Boeing to take off on the spot and become a left-footed military and right-footed civilian airline. Although since the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has not personally participated in any major wars, and the demand for military aircraft has declined, but in terms of civilian aircraft, Boeing is also the world's top, whether it is war or peace, it can make money.
But the twist soon followed. In the last century, the Bretton Woods system collapsed, the oil crisis broke out, Ronald Reagan became the leader, and neoliberal economics prevailed. The United States, an industrial powerhouse, has begun to gradually shift to the financial industry, and the manufacturing industry with lower profits has actively or passively shifted to developing countries. The logic in this is very simple, the profits that can be generated by the financial industry are not comparable to the hard work of manufacturing, Wall Street quickly attracted the best talents in the United States, when these scholars are unwilling to do scientific research, only want to study the top structure of the American manufacturing industry, began to crack.
After World War II, the United States created the world's best innovation system, and this effect was transmitted downwards by the shrinking size of factories, the loss of a large number of workers, and the fact that schools no longer train relevant technical personnel. For decades, American companies can indeed make money by relying on brand effect and technology monopoly, but a fatal problem soon arises, how to ensure quality control of manufacturing links outsourced to other countries? There is a very classic story about Boeingsaid that they had outsourced the software design and testing engineering of a model to an Indian company, and in order to pursue higher profits, Indians found a group of college students with an hourly salary of only $9 to write**, and Boeing broke out in a cold sweat after finding out.
The outsourcing link that requires technology is still like this, and everyone can imagine what the work that really needs to enter the field to make screws is like. According to some customers who have worked with Boeing for a long time, they have never worried about the quality of Boeing planes in the past, but in recent years, Boeing's new planes have always had loose screws, scattered metal fragments, and even missing tools.
The production line of the Boeing 737 MAX family of aircraft at the Seattle Renton plant in the United States, this is one of the most complex machines ever built by mankind. How irresponsible does Boeing have to be to do such a rough job. But correspondingly, the company's management has pushed the stock price up by stopping the development of new aircraft, outsourcing manufacturing, and spending money on buybacks**. We all know that there are huge pitfalls associated with this, but no one will give up their low-hanging fruit until disaster strikes.
You say, doesn't the United States know about these things? I think they know very well in their hearts, otherwise the White House would not have specifically asked Boeing to revise its corporate culture, but as a company, is it wrong to chase profit maximization? In the logic of the Americans, there seems to be nothing wrong with it. Trump and Biden, the two American leaders before and after, both shouted the slogan of "the return of manufacturing", as if they were the saviors of American industry. But the reality is that the U.S. shipbuilding industry laments that the speed of manufacturing is being crushed by China, and the workers of the U.S. auto industry are holding the largest strike in history.
Gone are the U.S. manufacturing dominanceIt seems that from the top down in this country, no one wants to pay attention to the life and death of the manufacturing industry, and if you can make money for a day, you can earn an extra day. The current Boeing Company, or the American industry, is like an 80-year-old man, he looks quite healthy, but in fact, every cell in the body is constantly aging, no one knows, the next time he says the wrong thing, can't find the way, when will it happen, if he still falls in front of everyone, can he rely on his own strength to get up again.